Managing ‘great expectations’: What can land administration realistically achieve?

Managing 'great expectations': What can land administration realistically achieve?Land administration theory and practice have recently witnessed a turn recognizing and emphasizing the importance of social justice outcomes.While welcome, the practicability of these aspirations is in doubt, not least because of the diversity and complexity of perspectives concerning landrelated problems.We show how a boundary-work approach that does not require consensus on theory, language or epistemology as a precondition for collaboration is highly effective when applied to this subject.Much more common ground exists across highly diverse disciplines than is often assumed, and a broad interdisciplinary consensus exists concerning several key issues.Land administration technologies are the products of specific values and epistemic judgements and assumptions that are, in many cases, antithetical to social justice outcomes.Such assumptions and values necessarily lead to flawed models of institutions that are too often ancillary within theory, despite being integral to the practice of land interventions.These include the state, the law and the community.As a result, interventions rely on and reproduce fictions, artefacts and discourses that are misaligned with social reality.The continuing excavation and substantive reconstruction of the underlying values and assumptions currently embedded in land administration theory and practice is required if achieving social justice outcomes is to become realistic.Continuing and expanding boundary work in the fashion showcased by this collection is a promising route to pursue this objective.